This song was written about an episode in a cozy fantasy novella called Andras Hill, which can be found at Anthracyda.org.

I’m trying to get back to songwriting. This was in response to a challenge on writing a song involving listening to the wind. I started playing around with the theme of “winds of change” and how everything is always changing. So often we don’t hear the first whispers and, when we do, we try to fight it instead of accepting it and going with the flow. The changes can be physical (I can’t stop getting older), they can be cultural, they can be economic or environment or scientific or lots of other things.

Someone once said “Things were simpler when we were younger” and the response was “No, we were simpler”. We can’t go back to the naïveté of our younger days, but we can reset how we engage with life, the universe and others.

For those of you who care, this was actually written in an open D minor tuning.

Trigger warning: Song about domestic violence.

This originally started out as a song about recovering from the end of a marriage involving domestic violence. Then after watching some relationships close to me, it took a twist at the end and got more complicated, with a flavor of co-dependency so the ending is sadder and more wistful than the original practically dancing on the grave.

How many of you have a kitchen utility drawer? How many of you buy your bread pre-sliced, but have a breadknife you never use? How many of you keep it in the kitchen drawer?

Usually I write my own melodies, but this is written to the tune of Waltzing Matilda

Inadvised use of percussive maintenance, but a good result from a sarcastic comment to someone who can actually change directions.

Early early draft. Sometimes you drop nuance and need to be heavy handed. This song is a bit unusual in that it starts with an accidental.

My only obviously autobiographical song. Families pay a price for the
games that politicians play that those politicians never pay.

The poem “Flanders Fields” was written by a Canadian doctor during
WWI. It is patriotic and, unfortunately, glories in the continuation
of conflict. Must so many people insist on having an enemy to unite
and fight against?

Lifelong friends who will pick you up when you are down are to be treasured.

There is a difference between politician: “one engaged in party
politics, especially as a trade; one who promotes the interests of a
political party, one concerned with public affairs for the sake of
profit or of a clique.” and statesman: “enlightened, disinterested,
and high-minded service to the state or the people of the state”.

We usually have too many politicians and not enough statesmen.

For my daughter when she was in junior high school. If you insisted on
a rule and justified it because the authority figure said so, you
guaranteed a fight. If you gave reasonable reasons for the rule, there
wouldn’t be any problem. I’ve seen reports that up to 30% of any human
population consists of authoritarians. Those in power want mindless
obedience. Even those not in positions of power want to be
thoughtlessly led and will insist on mindless obedience to authority
and punishment otherwise.

We as adults are afraid of things that we as children were ignorant
of. Sometimes we think it would be nice to be back at that age, but
now we are the ones with responsibility.

Growing up from the parent’s point of view.